O.C. POP MUSIC REVIEW : Axton Meshes With His Music : Songwriter’s roots are in folk, but his show at the Crazy Horse covers a wide range of tunes and moods. He also demonstrates that his singing talent has been underrated.

“There are no boundaries to songwriting,” Hoyt Axton said at the start of his early show at the Crazy Horse on Monday night. “I’ve found you can write about anything.” The generous one-hour, 34-minute performance that followed offered graphic proof.

From a number about a hijacker (“I got a pistol in my pocket and a time bomb in my luggage/I want $13 million for the people and the plane”) to “Joy to the World,” a song of his that was a major hit for Three Dog Night, Axton revealed a talent that is wonderfully inventive, a seemingly bottomless well of songwriting ideas.

Throughout the 19-song set, he alternated freely between his own hits (such as “Bony Fingers” and “Lion in the Winter”), his lesser known songs (such as “Little White Moon”) and songs he’s written for others (“Never Been to Spain,” also recorded by Three Dog Night).

And, though he is better known as a songwriter than as an interpreter, he didn’t hesitate to tackle material by other writers, such as Robbie Robertson’s “The Weight.” (“I always try to do the next best thing to writing songs,” he quipped. “I try to steal them.”). Axton and his versatile eight-piece band put their own stamp on everything. One of the evening’s high points was Axton’s a cappella rendition of a traditional folk song, “Life Is Like a Mountain Railway.”

During the show’s finest moments, Axton meshed with his music to become the personification of the modern troubadour. His roots are in folk music, and his songs have aged well; with their eloquent simplicity and strong story lines, such Axton mainstays as “Evangelina” and “Della and the Dealer” have become modern-day folk classics. His stories and jokes not only filled the spaces between the tunes but weaved in and out of them. (When he forgot the lyrics at the start of Chuck Berry’s “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” he joked--”They say your memory is the second thing that goes”--so effectively that it almost seemed he had planned the miscue, just so he could fire off that line).

At times, though, he seemed to get carried away with the jokes, and the show would drag. When he launched into a series of trite lawyer jokes, it was almost as bad as being cornered by the office bore at a party. Axton was much more on target when he stuck to personal experiences, whether stories about his career as an actor or observations concerning his marriages and divorces. (“After three divorces, I suddenly had this terrible thought: Could it be me?”)

Even when the show did bog down with talk, however, Axton was able to bring it back on track with a song. He is so well-known as a songwriter, actor and personality that his strengths as a singer have been somewhat underrated. Monday, he showed that he can finesse a sensitive lyric, be solid and gritty, or belt out a rocker like “Brown Eyed Handsome Man.”

Axton’s excellent band handled a wide diversity of material and moods. It turned “Joy to the World” into a party on stage, yet also could step back and show a light touch on quiet songs such as “Evangelina.”

Fiddle player Dennis Fetchet did a stunningly intricate version of “Orange Blossom Special,” and guitarist Michael Curtis sang “Southern Cross,” a song he wrote that was a hit for Crosby, Stills and Nash. One of the evening’s nicest moments came when Axton’s daughter April joined him on stage for a couple of duets, including his poignant “Bluebird.”